The neon sign above the entrance of the Blue Anchor no longer hummed its flickering red glow into the alleyway. Three nights prior, a group of off-duty dockworkers had smashed the glass tubing with discarded bottles, leaving the narrow street behind the fish port submerged in absolute, suffocating darkness.
Inside the unlit back room, the air smelled heavily of stale tobacco smoke, damp felt, and cheap rum. Barlas sat motionless on an overturned wooden crate in the corner. The green velvet felt of the center billiards table was ruined—covered in streaks of dried rainwater from a leak in the corrugated roof and yellowed dust that had settled over everything like ash.
For nearly thirty hours, he had not left that stool. His eyes, rimmed with dark red circles of fatigue and unspent rage, were fixed on a rusted iron padlock resting in the middle of the table—the very lock his collectors had brought back from the gates of Farooq Flour Mills on the night Hunza stood in their way.
The back door creaked open an inch, letting in a thin ribbon of dim streetlamp light. Leo slipped inside, closing the heavy wooden door behind him with extreme care. He kept his back pressed against the timber frame, his hands shoved deep into his denim jacket pockets, his eyes darting nervously toward Barlas's shadowed frame.
"The union marshals came through the waterfront market at nine this morning, boss," Leo whispered, his voice dry and trembling. "They took the ledgers from the fish stalls. Captain Vargas signed the impound sheet himself in front of the whole street. Nobody is paying the territorial collection anymore. Not the produce trucks, not the canal boats... nobody."
Barlas slowly reached into his coat pocket. His thick, dirt-caked fingers pulled out a heavy, hollowed-out brass shell casing—an old souvenir from his early days as a harbor enforcer—and began rolling it back and forth across his bruised knuckles. Click-clack, click-clack. The sound echoed sharp and hollow against the bare plaster walls.
"The marshals didn't take those ledgers because Vargas suddenly grew a backbone, Leo," Barlas said. His voice was low, flat, and hollowed out, stripped of its usual booming authority, leaving only a cold, raspy poison. "Vargas is sixty years old. He hasn't moved a finger without a bribe in twenty years. Old men don't wake up one morning and act like heroes unless someone gives them a reason to believe in something."
Leo swallowed hard, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "It was the Elders, boss... Rashid called the Council at the Maritime Hall—"
"It was the boy!" Barlas roared, slamming his open palm down onto the corner of the billiards table so hard the wooden slate groaned. A shower of fine white plaster dust rained down from the ceiling rafters, coating his greasy hair.
He stood up slowly, his tall, lean frame casting a jagged shadow against the wall.
"Eighteen years old," Barlas spat, his chest heaving under his stained leather coat. "An undocumented beggar who crossed the border with nothing in his pockets but dirt. He sleeps on a thin woven mat on the third floor of Calle Siete. He earns seven hundred pesos carrying flour sacks until his knees bleed. And in less than two months, he makes every harbor captain, every dock worker, and every old man in District 4 talk about him like he's a saint!"
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"They say he's different, boss," Leo muttered, lowering his gaze to his boots. "They say he turned down two thousand pesos from us when his wife didn't even have medicine. They say he lifted Tomas's cart with his bare arms and only took fifty pesos. The whole market talks about it."
Barlas took three slow, heavy steps across the room until he was standing directly in front of Leo. The stench of unwashed clothes and sour alcohol radiated from him. He reached out and grabbed Leo by the collar of his denim jacket, pulling the younger boy forward until their faces were inches apart.
"A man who wants money can be bought, Leo," Barlas whispered, his teeth bared in a cold, sneering grimace. "Give him five thousand pesos, give him a piece of the dock tax, and he belongs to you. A man who wants power can be broken. Hit him with an iron bar or threaten his family, and he falls on his knees. But a boy who walks through this mud convinced that he only needs 'clean bread'... he thinks God Himself is holding his arm."
Barlas shoved Leo back against the doorframe, letting go of his collar. He turned back toward the table, picking up the heavy iron crowbar that rested beside the rusted padlock.
"I built this district," Barlas grumbled softly, tracing the cold, rusted edge of the iron bar with his thumb. "For ten years, every cargo cart that rolled off the canal paid my tax. Every paperless boy who wanted a shift at the docks had to come to this room first. I gave them work, I gave them protection from the municipal marshals, and I took my cut. That is how this city works!"
"The Council says your time is finished, boss," Leo said softly, his voice barely audible over the low hum of traffic from the main road. "Old Man Rashid told the drivers that if any of your old crew comes near the grain district or Calle Siete, every union worker in the port will shut down the gates."
A thin, terrible smile crept across Barlas's face—a smile devoid of warmth or sanity. His dark eyes glinted with a frantic, obsessive fire.
"Rashid thinks an official paper affidavit from Farooq makes the boy untouchable," Barlas murmured, stepping toward the high, barred window that looked out toward the distant yellow streetlamps of the residential lanes. "He thinks because the Elders signed a sheet of paper at the Maritime Hall, the boy can live like a king on seven hundred pesos. But paper burns, Leo. Affidavits rot. And clean boys bleed just like anyone else."
Barlas turned his back to the window, leaning his weight heavily against the wall.
"Find out where the girl goes when he's working the night shift at Farooq's mill," Barlas commanded, his voice dropping into a harsh, uncompromising whisper. "I want to know every hour she steps out onto Calle Siete. I want to know every nurse who visits that clinic, every delivery cart that drops off supplies, and every door between her room and the street."
Leo looked up, terror flashing in his eyes. "Boss... Old Man Rashid said if anyone touches the girl, the whole harbor—"
"I didn't say touch her!" Barlas snapped, his hand tightening around the iron crowbar until his knuckles turned bone-white. "Not yet. I want her watched. I want to know when her time comes. A boy who thinks his faith makes him invincible hasn't faced a night when everything he built collapses at once."
He looked back out the cracked glass toward the dark skyline of District 4, where the hum of Farooq Flour Mills echoed faintly over the distant water.
"He wanted clean bread," Barlas whispered into the dark room. "I'm going to make sure he chokes on it."